I have a medical marijuana card and I know many growers, dispensary owners, etc. It is no mystery that organized crime has already become involved in the medical marijuana industry. The Hells Angels supply dispensaries in the Bay area, and in the Los Angeles area, I know for a fact there are guys with ties to gangs such as the Crips, 18th Street as well as some guys with connections to Russian/Eastern European OC.

The one thing I want to say is it is unlikely that OC would actually own a dispensary (at least for an extended period of time). There is too much regulation even in California. The real money is creating a collective. A collective is a group of growers who get together and basically start a company to produce weed and to sell it to dispensaries. This is where regulation is really loose. The state laws actually encourage the collectives to sell some of their product illegally back east. The reasons for this is the dispensaries quite frankly screw the growers. The dispensaries will only pay, at most $1000 a pound and that is for the very best stuff. Usually they pay $400-$700 a pound. then the dispensaries sell the weed for up to $18 a gram. This system, in my opinion encourages growers to sell their product illegally, because they cannot actually make enough money just selling to the dispensaries. Collectives have to sell a certain amount per year to the dispensaries to show the state officials they are on the up and up. I wanted to post this as I thought it was relevant to this thread and to give those who live outside California an idea of how these places work (at least in California).